Just because you ignore a character doesn’t mean he’s ignoring you.

Alright, so this is mostly fictional, of course, because I’m not hallucinating quite yet. That being said, Otherworldly Discipline, Book Two: A Master’s Hand has been on my mind big-time this week, and I’m actually feeling a little guilty that I’ve put it off. Low book sales has made it somewhat of a low-priority for me, but I really miss the characters. Anyway–this is sort of what would happen if a character popped in from the Otherworld… Enjoy. -KMJ

I always have a suspicion, when a character writes itself too easily, that it’s going to have trouble letting itself go. Hard-to-write characters and I, you see, have a strained relationship by the end of a project. That’s why I stuck Thorton with a pregnant, mischievous nineteen-year-old wife and triplets at the end of the book… Trust me, he deserved what he got—good n’ hard.

Moriarty never gave me much grief. Oh, sure. He had loved to assure me that the only people wearing my shoes nowadays were hobos, and he was quite fascinated when I had the worst time deciding if he was Huxian or a werewolf—until he won the argument. He’s not a dog by any means, and I guess it was very insulting to be insinuated as such a few centuries ago.

Anyway, I finished Otherworldly Discipline well over a year ago now, and it’s been all quiet on the Western front. Oh, I dappled with a chapter or two back in October, but then I put it down and started to work on other things.

So, in retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised to see Moriarty on my computer last night. And I do mean on my computer. I walked in, and there he was—chocolate eyed and long-fingered, looking through my private folders while simultaneously drinking the last of my k-cup sampler tea and eating my last slice of lemon cake.

At first I thought he had wondered into the wrong apartment but then he looked over and grunted at me in that aloof manner that brought me back. Suddenly I realized who I was looking at. “Moriarty?”

Moriarty looked in my direction, finally. “You know,” he said in lieu of a greeting, his British accent so ridiculously thick and so deep that I was nearly aroused for a moment, “I fear you might have an addiction to pornography. I used to think it was myth, but I’m about to admit that I was actually wrong. I mean, what is this?” He pointed to the screen where two men were in compromising positions with a woman.

“Research,” I replied flippantly, trying not to let my absolute humiliation show. I leaned over his shoulder—I always forget how tall he is, so I had to reach—and shut off my monitor.

“You’ve certainly gotten more perverted since the last time I saw you,” Moriarty commented, arching one of his eyebrows judgmentally.

“And apparently far crazier!” I commented, aghast, throwing my purse in its proper corner. “By the way, I better only be imagining you eating that the last of the cake! I’ve been thinking about it non-stop—”

“Have you ever seen the film Fight-Club?” he answered me with, eating another bite.

I lifted a side of my lip with distaste. “…Yeah.”

“That’s what’s going on here, really,” he assured me, then put the empty plate in front of him and picked up his tea. “So, you’ll never get to enjoy that cake. Just let it go. I’ve come all the way here on important business.” With that, he crossed his long, long legs. He was taking up the whole room! He was actually quite intimidating—he was unquestionably larger than me, and I’ve always thought of myself as quite tall at 5’6’’. I stared at him; wondering why I never write about midgets.

“Is it about you being a praying mantis?” I asked, sitting in the chair opposite.

He frowned. “You’re not very funny, you know.” He sat up then steadily leaned back; now he was the one assessing me. “The sad thing is that you think you are… It really only comes across as rude and pathetic.”

“Thanks. I needed that ego-boost,” I grumbled, then decided to get up and make coffee. Maybe he’d just disappear… “Why are you here?” I asked. “Last I saw you, I was giving you a sixteen-year vacation between book one and book two. Haven’t you had a gaggle of kids with Alice?”

He gave a laugh. “It would have been a gaggle by now, but after having Cole, we both decided a ten-year breather was essential.”

I grinned mischievously. “You know I thought about giving you quintuplets or something like that.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he replied, swirling his tea. “You’re sadistic in nature. But see here,” he suddenly said, straightening his back, “I haven’t come to have a tea-party with you, Korey, I—!”

Moriarty thinks he’s The Shit with too much hair-product and the fact that he’s got flawless skin, but let me tell you–he’s a dominant man with a hand of steel. He’s also a warrior… But Huxians are fox-shifting tricksters with a pension for seducing virgins and mischief… Or seducing mischievousness virgins… So beware.

I shrugged, “Then why are you drinking tea?”

“Because I’ve been drinking tea for the last seven centuries, as you know quite well! It’s what people from a more sophisticated time and a more sophisticated country do!” I snorted. Springing from a long line of Irish Pub owners that opened its doors early in the morning, I could still say that none of my relations have ever been to his level of ‘sophistication’—not a one of us tea-drinkers. “Now stop being cheeky and avoiding the subject!” he growled at me. “Ashrcroft is gone.”

“What do you mean gone?” I asked, figuring he was only being dramatic. I was fussing with my Keurig, wondering if the K-cup in it was fresh or not. “He’s off fucking some chick, right?”

“No,” Moriarty grumbled. “That’s what he was doing ten years ago. It isn’t right what you’ve done to him! He’s gone absolutely mad, Korey! He’s not trying to forget Charlotte anymore! Last I checked, he was wallowing about, gone completely ‘round the bend, and beginning to think Charlotte was far, far more perfect that she was. You and I both know that she was sort of a twit.”

“Really? I always thought, of all my characters, she was the most like me,” I replied, then looked up and saw Moriarty shaking his head at me.

“That would explain a lot,” Moriarty huffed.

My mouth dropped. “You liked Charlotte!”

“She was tolerable, I suppose,” he replied breezily. “Certainly, I’m not the one that threw her off a cliff, killing her.” He made it sound like it was me who’d done it and not Lachlan, the story’s villain.

I pursed my lips, wondering what I should divulge. “Charlotte… might not be dead.”

And that’s why I have tea stains in my carpet this morning. Moriarty spit it out everywhere. It was a mess. “What?” he demanded, not sounding happy about it at all. “Do you know how far she fell? It was a long drop—we’re not talking a puddle-hop. We’re talking over a hundred feet! Lachlan’s body washed up…”

I looked over my kitchen counter. Was that a stain? I licked my thumb and scrubbed at it. It was definitely preferable to looking right at Moriarty when he was in one of these moods.

“Korey?” When I looked up, he wasn’t sitting in his chair. I turned, and he right there next to me, staring down at me.

Damn it he was tall. For some reason, I ran out of spit and air. I just sputtered, “Ye… hm?” and fluttered my eye lashes, thinking that innocent people do that all the time.

He narrowed his eyes at me and I took a step back. He took a step forward, saying, “What aren’t you telling me? You’ve got that I-need-a-good-whipping look about you.”

I took another step back and found myself trapped in the corner of countertop. “It’s possible…” I wheezed, “that… Lachlan’s not dead, either.”

He didn’t move at all, didn’t twitch, didn’t blink.

“I… There might have been sorcery involved. He… Had sort of been taking up… two bodies at the time of his death to take over the Otherworld with an army of…”

He still wasn’t blinking.

“Anyway… Charlotte’s sort of changed form because she was rescued by a demi-god named Hoel, who sort of adopted her since she had no memories of anything that happened, and he wanted to protect her from whoever tried to execute her… And it’s possible that… She eventually gets… married by proxy to a warlord… who is actually…” I swallowed. It’s hard to swallow when there’s no spit in your mouth! “Lachlan.”

He finally nodded and blinked, only very quickly. “Alright,” he sighed, his voice quite rumbly, “I’m going to give you a five-second head start.”

I felt sweat perspire on the back of my neck. “Before what?” I asked.

“Four seconds,” he warned. “Three…”

I wasted nearly a whole two seconds just getting around his leering form without full on body-checking him into the kitchen counter like a hockey-star. I probably could have gotten all the way to the mail box before he caught me if I had two more seconds—I was absolutely flying down those stairs leading up to my apartment’s front door.

No idea in hell how he caught me so easily; I had to have been moving at Olympic speeds reserved for people who are trying to escape Grizzly bears (and, of course, the actual Olympics). Then again, I suppose he was only one second behind and his legs are way longer than mine… And leg-span makes a definite difference, let no mistakes be made on that account!

“I think you should really let me explain further,” I was puffing after he’d caught me from around my stomach, yanked me back (I could have gotten whip-lash!), and tilted me over his shoulder.

It was not comfortable at all! Moriarty’s shoulder’s not bony, by any means, but I could feel his collar digging right into my guts, especially as he climbed the stairs. I was trying to find a place to grab onto that wouldn’t result in him dropping me, though, because that would have been even more painful. I grabbed my arms around his chest, secured on the front by his arm around my knees. “Why? What more complications could you possibly add?” he demanded. “Why can’t you write a normal, linear story like everyone else? You know, they hate each other, like each other, there’s some conflict they come over, then they marry? Then end it.”

He dropped me unceremoniously on my bed. “You know James will be home any second!”

He pulled a pocket watch out of his coat, as if he wanted to prove that he was even more disgustingly British than I originally wrote him as. “If any second means in five hours. Besides, you think he’ll disagree with anything I do? Pull down whatever you call those.” He pointed at my pants.

I locked my jaw firmly as I wiggled my way to the edge of the bed. “I’m not taking off my pants, Moriarty. You have to deal with it. I’m your author!”

He was listening as was taking off his belt.

“I’m your author!” I repeated, my voice getting more screechy. “You do what I tell you to! And you can’t spank me! I get spanked enough by James from being… you know…” Instead of crawling to the edge of the bed, I was now trying to crawl away from him.

“A brat?” he finished.

“I’m not a brat!” I just speak like one to James sometimes. I have a tendency to get very defensive at the drop of a hat. Like right that second—I never said the right thing when I was defensive. It was as if my brain stops functioning… Probably because it’s too busy thinking up reasons why something in particular isn’t my fault.

He grabbed my ankle just as I had turned my body to hop off the other side of my mattress… The side of the bed closest to the balcony. I was thinking I could go through there, round back into the living room’s porch-entrance, and then make it to the front door, make it to the garage, speed away to the airport, and fly to China.

He grabbed my ankle before I even made it off the bed. “What about Alice?” I squealed, trying to kick him off.

Apparently, he’d been given permission to beat the snot out of me if he wanted to. “You’re lucky she’s not here to hold you down. You’ve given her three insane children in the last sixteen story-years. Do you think she can’t wield a mean paddle by now?”

Good point. “You’re not understanding how Charlotte’s character will develop by the end of Book Two! So, so much development!” Moriarty was now pinning me to the bed with his body, reaching around my front and trying to get my jeans unbuttoned and unzipped. By then, I was planning to do way more weight-lifting at the gym. Was I always this puny?

“You have no regard for my Master,” he gritted in my ear. He yanked my pants and panties violently to my knees. “His bride is out there—married to his evil brother, no less—and he’s been drinking himself into oblivion and not taking care of any of his responsibilities! And you still haven’t given a care to where he’s gone!”

Grabbing my bottom, which was being hauled down so it neatly pent over the bed, I said, “Don’t worry about him! He’s probably just looking for her! And he’ll totally, totally find her and she’ll be better than she ever was!”

“Sixteen years!” he snapped at me. I don’t think my promise for a HEA had sunk in yet. “Stick your ridiculous little ass into the air, Korey.”

“This is a bit of an overreaction!” I cried, for some reason down-playing his reaction. “What about the art? The art!”

“Alright, let me ask you this,” he riddled. “In this art of yours, how will Ashcroft react when he learns that his brother has been taking liberties with Ashcroft’s woman?”

I could have lied, I understand. I could have told Moriarty that Ashcroft was going to be totally cool when things started to unravel towards the end, but the man’s gonna lose it. I haven’t written it, no, but I knew that much. But it wasn’t my fault—Lachlan’s evil. This was just the way things were. “It’s possible that he’ll throw her out on her hind-end. But he won’t know she’s Charlotte—she probably won’t know she’s Charlotte yet by then!”

“Probably?” he seethed.

…Are authors not allowed to use the world ‘probably’ when it comes to plot-description? I haven’t decided yet! I was going to cross that bridge when I came to it!

The belt struck as silent as a snake—I expected whooshing, and I get the belt all the time. I keep forgetting the way it silently bites into your ass, making a loud smacking sound only upon impact… A really loud smacking sound that the neighbors would surely have heard if they hadn’t moved out last week. “Jesus!” I hissed. The stroke was so serious! “Fuck, Moriarty! Give me a break—ouch!” He wouldn’t even give me a break between strokes! He was striking my poor bottom like he was on a schedule!

One stroke fell and then another, and another! I was trying desperately to get up or turn around, but he had me, and my wrists, pinned behind my back in a very uncomfortable way that made me feel like my shoulders were going to be killing me all night long.

“Moriarty! You’re hurting me!” I informed him in a no-laughing manner.

“Good, you little… I don’t even know how to describe you! You’re a silly, silly woman who apparently needs a red bottom to write thirteen miserable chapters of a book! How has it taken you nearly seventeen months?” I heard him hiss as he continued to wail on me. “It’s worse that you know what the plot is—even though you’ve made it a complicated jumble!”

“I’ve been working on other projects!” I claimed, feeling rattled and even a little desperate. “I’ve published three books since then! One was really long!”

Damn Thorton. It was HIM who’d made me take forever on Learning to Blush! Oh! Oh in Swarii Brides, Three, I am going to give Thorton another set of triplets, so help me God! “And I’ve had a full-time job. And cover art. And I started my own company! And all these websites!”

“I was on your computer all day before you’ve gotten back! You never write five words when five hundred will do! You rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. Personally, I don’t think rewriting makes it any better!”

Said the non-werewolf. It was him who’d made me rewrite the first half of Otherworldly twenty times… Okay, that was Charlotte’s fault.

Another belt stripe echoed through the room, this one was followed by a white-flash of pain. I swear my eyes nearly turned inside out. “Fuck! Not there!” Not my sit-spot! Not with the belt!

Alas; Moriarty was in a punishing mood. Maybe Ashcroft had driving him and his buddying family insane with all of his brooding and going mad. So, it was as if I was hanging a billboard that said, ‘Sit-Spot: Where you want to be!’ with a little red arrow pointing at that area.

“Please! Moriarty! Please stop!” I begged, panting and shuddering. I hated to beg Moriarty—it was like going up to a vampire and exposing your jugular. It was only going to get worse.

For a second, the pain stopped. In response, the skin on my bottom crawled and my body shuddered. “Don’t get too relaxed. There are still white spots left,” he warned in my ear, “so you’d better tell me what I want to hear right quick.”

“Merry-go-rounds!” I yelped. “Merry-go-rounds, lollipops, and noodle salad! That’s what’s going to be in the next book! A giant tea-party like that one drawing scene in Mary Poppins!”

I think he thought I was being cheeky. I wasn’t—I really wanted to say what he wanted to hear. Unfortunately, due to a blatant mis-interpretation on his end, my bottom suffered for it. I felt a firm ‘slap’ hit my flank and puffed out a cry of air, unable to actually produce sound.

“No, no—” I couldn’t believe a hand-spanking could be quite that hard. Which is saying something because my husband’s hand feels like wood. I think the big difference here is that Moriarty had huge, gigantic hands. Also, there wasn’t the possibility of make-up sex. Anyway—he also spanked in a way that made me think he wanted me to asphyxiate. He didn’t let me catch my breath, he just filled the room with fleshy slaps as I continued to scream, “Stop! Stop!” Until my voice got hoarse… Which happened quite quickly.

“You’re such a baby,” Moriarty snapped. “Nobody cries this loud on the planet.”

I just made a dry sobbing noise.

He sat down on the bed next to me. I felt his weight shift the mattress. “So,” he began. It was odd to have to listen to a lecture at the end. James, you see, does it before he starts spanking. “I’m not going to let you talk much here, since you’re so bad at it and you’re only going to get yourself more bottom-smacking. This is what you’re going to do, though… Firstly, I don’t know where Ashcroft is but I’m worried. I want you to fish him out of wherever he is and bring him home in one piece. Secondly, you’re going to finish our adventure by Summer. Do you know when Summer starts?”

I gurgled, wondering if even HE could feel the heat from my surely-bruised bottom from where he was sitting.

He patted the small of my back and said, “That’s June twenty-first, poppet.”

“I have a book to do before that!” I grumped.

“I know,” he assured, “that’s why it’s not due in May.”

“You can’t impose deadlines!”

“There are some nice welts here that state otherwise,” he said, surely gesturing at my bottom. “Do they need some company?”

“No!” I cried immediately. “Dear lord, no!”

“Brilliant!” he said cheerfully, giving me another (unnecessarily hard) smack on my bottom as he popped up onto his feet, leaving me groaning. “Put on a skirt and get to it!” He picked up his belt and strapped it back on himself.

“I’m not going to wear skirts, Moriarty,” I groaned, trying to peel myself off the bed so I could relocate some shards of my dignity. “So give it up.”

“Absolutely no,” he refused and walked into my closet. I was finally pulling my rough jeans and thin panties back up when I heard from the closet a cry of, “Dear Lord!” He came out again, looking shell-shocked. “Are you a hobo?”

I didn’t give him any sort of response. I just glared at him and buttoned my pants.

“Seriously, Tim Gunn would just walk in there, take one look, and torch the damn thing.” He put up his finger just as I opened my lips to retort and added firmly, “Watching style shows and knowing who Tim Gunn is has absolutely no bearing on my sexual orientation.”

“I wasn’t going to make a gay joke,” I lied, like I was far to mature to ever make one about a man who wears pink far more often than the average male… Or the average female, for that matter. “I was just wondering why you’re still around after issuing your orders at me like I was the pimple-faced kid in the McDonald’s drive through.”

He grinned at me, showing one of his fangs—it was his real give-away that he wasn’t entirely human.

“I thought we were going to do what we used to do together,” Moriarty said with a shrug. “Sit around and make fun of the people and on the telly, simultaneously watching reality shows while judging anyone who’d ever actually go on one…”

I actually smirked, which was actually something I thought I wouldn’t do again with the way my ass was throbbing. “What are you trying to avoid at home?” I asked, knowing that he’d only drawl out time with me to avoid something else.

He grinned sheepishly, “There’s this parent-teacher nonsense at Cole’s school that I told Alice I didn’t think I’d be able to make,” he admitted.

I squared my shoulders and said, “Let me get this straight—you come in here, lecture me, spank me, threaten me, give me impossible deadlines, and then I’m also supposed to just chill with you on the couch for a few hours wasting time and smoking weed with you?”

He gave a nod. “Yes,” he said, although I think his tone admitted that he knew he was being very fickle, selfish, and contrary.

I pursed my lips and thought about this for a long moment. Moriarty is a total ass, but man-oh-man—he can be as fun and as funny as hell…

“Fine, just never speak of the spanking you gave me or the cellulite on my ass ever again.”

“I haven’t even begun to speak about the dimples on your ass,” he replied with a suave grin.

“I hate you,” I sighed.

“You hate and love me like you hate and love yourself,” Moriarty said. He was quoting Tolkein, of course, but it rung especially true right now.

20 Responses to Just because you ignore a character doesn’t mean he’s ignoring you.

Lol! Thank you *Moriarty*? He didn’t do anything except take rights with my posterior then drink all my tea. When he was done with that, he moved to my coffee.. (ot the folgers, mind you. He rifled through all my stuff until he found the Kona. That’s like… I don’t even know. $2 a cup? And then he didn’t even put anything away. Just left a mess.) He didn’t make *my* day. Although, surely he’d be happy to make yours, because, even though he pretends he doesn’t, he does care about making people happy. Not me, of course, but others. 🙂

I hope this means that the book will be available for sale by June 21st. I hate to read a book that is actually half written, and have to wait forever for the second half. Also, please tell us what books are coming soon and when we can expect them. I just purchased the latest book on Amazon an hour ago when I went looking for Otherworldly Disciplne 2. I was VERY DISAPPOINTED when it wasn’t there. Moriarity had better keep pushing. I love good book series, but hate waiting. I didn’t start Twightlight until Breaking Dawn was about to be released. PLEASE HURRY.

Oh, no. I’m with you. I hate cliffhangers. I think I only wrote one with OD1 because I was feeling sadistically-natured that day. And back then I really wasn’t done with OD2. I’m still not. But I had that Learning to Blush thing I was commissioned to write, and then I got thrown into Scifi land. It took awhile to find my way back. 🙂

As to WHEN books are coming out… I don’t even know until I’m done. Right now, I’m writing something that’s supposed to be 40,000 words but am closing out today–the third day of writing it–at 28,000… SO I have a feeling it’s gonna be a long one. I have no idea what’s going to happen by the end of book when I start one, so it’s tough to figure. I’m sooo undisciplined.

But I PROMISE June 21 for OD2, at the latest! Deadlines are good for me–even when I self-impose them. 🙂

Sorry for all the torture. 😉 I’ll try to be gentle with the pliers next time. 🙂

I have never gotten more utter satisfaction out of reading a blog post in my life! Thank you, Moriarty!! Bravo! Job well done! Korey, this better not be a tease! I cannot live with the disappointment if I’m not able to read this book by summer!

You will, I promise… Because Moriarty has a proverbial gun to my head about it. Actually, I fear he’s a cane-sort of guy. So I should probably say 6-21 because M’s holding a cane (he’s British. Groan…) and looking at me like he plans to use it…

Anyway, deadlines are deadlines. I’m normally pretty good with them, so I can promise and cross my heart and lock my door because Moriarty’s one creature I’m NOT letting back into the house. 😉

I can’t wait for the second book! When I read the beginning of book 2 (at the end of book 1), I knew it was Lachlan!
Summer cannot get here fast enough.
Great job bringing in the cake stealing, spanking hot (and your spanking was HOT) Huxian! I love Moriarty.
Thanks for sharing. 🙂

See, I thought it HAD to be Lachlan. Moriarty said I was making my plot too complicated, but I think he just doesn’t like Lachlan. It’s really too bad for M because he’ll just have to deal with the fact that he still has killing Lachlan on his to-do list. 😉

And brought him in? Hell, now I feel like I should change my locks. Fridge-molesting sorry excuse for a forest critter that he is. 😉

Brianna was right! Probably my favorite blog post of all time! Good thing I didn’t have to pee because I would have done it in my skirt ( 🙂 ) !!! I will definatley have to follow this blog from now on.